


everyone’s a critic

by Veletrix



Series: mixtapes and miscalculations [2]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: after over a year i finally publish another dbd fic, but sometimes it be like that, i love him i truly do, no warnings except quentin gets pantsed and murdered, nothing shippy here unless you wanna interpret as shippy. i guess., this is basically a sequel to my frank’s mixtape sucks duology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veletrix/pseuds/Veletrix
Summary: Perhaps Quentin could be smarter, less impulsive, less antagonizing to the killer who he’s already indirectly antagonized. Perhaps he could’ve thought of better escape routes.Or perhaps Frank should just learn how to take criticism.
Series: mixtapes and miscalculations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757032
Kudos: 49





	everyone’s a critic

**Author's Note:**

> hi, it’s me again, after over a literal year i post a new fic. if you’ve read any of my older fics and have been waiting for a new one, im really sorry.
> 
> anyway, this is a sort of sequel to Frank’s Mixtape Sucks wherein the rat bastard himself confronts quentin about his subjective opinions on music. i think he takes it better than most people on twitter.
> 
> anyway, you dont have to have read that other fic to enjoy it, but there are some references to it. (tbh i might prefer it if you didnt read it—i really hate my writing from a year ago haha)
> 
> anyway, as usual, this is unbeta’d and unedited. may fix it up later but, we’ll see!

The Entity seemed to have a preferred way of their survival: hugging crumbling walls and dropping heavy pallets of wood, flinging themselves out of broken windows and suiciding off of roofs and hills. But when windows were blocked by spider-like legs, twitching in the air, sharp as glass, and the pallets were all splintered across the floor in dismembered planks of wood, one gets creative in the face of death.

As of yet, Entity did not discourage such creative methods, even if they’ve ended up with uncontrollable circumstances. (Once, Quentin had kicked over a lit barrel fire when faced against the Wraith, as he remembered the creature’s particular aversion to light. The grass in Azarov’s was dry and dead as the rest, so it was aflame within seconds, flooding almost the entirety of the trial. Two of them still got out, at least, but Jeff burned alive and Quentin choked on the smoke. Whatever happened to the Wraith, Quentin never found out. At least it was now prime past the time for the others to hold grudges for unintentional manslaughter.)

Quentin, uninjured, was being chased by Legion, who had a knife and a distaste for anyone who got away bloodless. (It was the member with the leather jacket and soiled bandages wrapped around his hands like a rosary of violence. He was the loudest, and cockiest, and called the female survivors ‘babe’ over pallets and the men ‘cocksuckers’ while providing impartial threats of gutting.) While Quentin tried not to hold grudges, there was still a sharp resentment on his tongue when he realized that Min had used almost every pallet this side of Shelter Woods, perhaps too full of herself to give up on trying to stun Legion out of his frenzy.

(“I bet they’re crackheads,” Meg once said over the warm crack of burning logs, looking far too serious for such a ridiculous comment. “They’re hyped up on some shit during chases.”

“Like what? I doubt the Entity is giving them free cocaine,” Quentin had pointed out.

She had shrugged. “Dirt, maybe, iunno man.”)

Legion’s knife caught him in the shoulder, almost completely tearing off his jacket sleeve. He skidded over a window, feet just barely placating themselves on the dirt. _Focus_. There was a time and place for this. Quentin hissed, a low sound of pain in the back of his throat as he gripped his arm. Legion was coming down from his high, giving Quentin a few seconds of distance, but his blood and muffled cries would lead back to him quickly enough. 

This was the corner of the world, everything else beyond was walled off by unsurmountable brick walls and wolf howls. They were running circles in a human sized terrarium, and there was nowhere to go but up.

Like a child playing hide and seek, Quentin remembered people’s tendency to look only at what was eye level, looking _up_ for things that can’t fly didn’t come later. And Shelter Woods had many, many trees.

Legion was in the jungle gym behind, dragging his combat knife over the serrated walls, an acute, sharp sound ripping over well-abused stone. 

“Hey, bitch, come on back, I didn’t mean to rip your shitty jacket,” Legion’s voice wasn’t as deep as David’s or as rough as Bill’s, but it cut sharply through the air, hidden partially by bloody mask, dragging itself over the stone in symphony with the knife. There was a smile in those words.

Ignoring the burn in his upper arm, Quentin planted a foot at the base of the nearest tree with the lowest branches, and managed to propel himself up to catch the nearest one. It had been years since he’s done extensive climbing from teenage trespassing, and longer yet since he’s been on the swim team, and his back and legs no longer portray the strength of a happy, healthier life, Quentin was not complete skin and bones yet. His climb is clumsy but accomplished (although he was grateful Nea wasn’t around to guffaw at his inelegance.) Quentin manages to make it a few branches up only due to adrenaline and Legion wasting time to posture. He balances one foot on a branch below, another against the trunk, and keeps his arms hooked over a branch that was slightly above chest level. He was grateful that the trees here still had their leaves, despite the graveyard chill. He stills himself as Legion rounds close.

To his credit, Legion does stop. Suspiciously quiet, he seemed to be giving the area--mottled blue grass and still trees with bowed heads, their leaves whispering together overhead with each foggy breath--as though he could see Quentin even across the forest. Quentin liked the MacMillan estates, as they matched his clothes, even when drowned in blood. 

Out of the corner of his eye, the wound in his arm drools steadily, blood running over the curve of his white skin, in fat red streaks and needle-thin drips that bead at the end like fine jewels. His arm is shaking like a leaf: he could see from the side that it was a deep gash, cutting into arteries and possible tendons. The ravine in his arm is a deep, heart red, and it _won’t stop bleeding_. He was failing the practice he had adapted from getting his shots in not thinking about it to avoid its pain, but there was a swelling numbness that indicates nerve damage, and the tight strain in his arm that spasmed like a twitching nerve indicated more than that. His sleeve wasn’t there to soak up the blood anymore. 

He grimaced as a pearl of blood slid down and over and trembled at the precipice of his skin. Legion was directly below him, muttering intelligibly, and shifting to move. Quentin’s arm gave an involuntary spasm, and the drop shucked off, dripping on top of Legion’s hood. Legion stilled. He lifted his head. A force built at the back of Quentin’s throat--the urge to scream in frustration. More blood poured off. It hit Legion’s forehead, recreating the river down Quentin’s skin over Legion’s porcelain mask, encircling the eyes and dribbling over the cheeks. Legion raised his hand with the knife, as though he would try to wipe the blood off, but it just hovered.

“Damn, to think you almost fuckin’ got me,” he said, amused, “but you sure as hell no _pussy_ up there, are you>”

Quentin gritted his teeth. Nea would’ve taken the bait, but Quentin just tensed his aching muscles, and attempted to pull himself up higher.

“And where the _fuck_ \--” there’s a thumb underneath him. Skin slapping bark, leather hitting trunk, “--do you think you’re going?”

His breath punched out of him as Legion began to scale the tree below him. Legion was _faster_. Quentin twisted severely to see Legion easily pulling himself up a branch. He was lean and lithe, the smallest of the male killers but advantageous in his own way. 

“You know what a little birdie told me? Someone told me that you--” Legion wrenched the knife out of the trunk, which he seemed to have been using as a makeshift lever. “--were talking about my jams.”

Quentin raised his foot, and kicked at Legion’s head. _Fuck you,_ he thought blearily, seethingly, _Fuck you, Joey._

His foot glanced off of the temple, but was enough to make Legion wobble from the moment. By the time he’d righted himself, Quentin had managed up a branch, and jerked out another kick.  
This one got his heel over Legion’s right eye, streaking mud and blood over half his face, and delivering a satisfying crack, however small and delicate. A thin spider web of one bloomed over the mask. Legion snarled, and recovered quickly, pushing himself up and swinging out his free hand, grabbing Quentin’s ankle.

Quentin wobbled, having to rely on his good arm for most of his weight. He snapped, “Yeah, it is. Meaningless, forgettable bullshit,” he attempted to wrest himself away, “like you.”

Legion was stronger--always--and managed to catch Quentin off guard with a hand on his belt and a followup plunge of his knife. His jeans ripped, belt severed, and he’s suddenly cold. He couldn’t tell where he was stabbed as there was always a process of adrenaline, the unpreparedness of his body every time, not processing it, then he’d feel the pull of ripped skin or see the blood and it came, throbbing, piercing. A strangled sound came out. Legion yanked him by the knife in his thigh and the remains of his waistband, and with that sudden, dizzying weakness in his arms, he dropped out of the tree like a stone.

The back of his head hummed with pain, and there was a chill all over. The sudden spiral from vertical to horizontal made his blood rush, which left his injured thigh and arm envious, and in turn he felt nauseous. The blood in his body was trying to escape through too many openings and running from one end of himself to another, leaving him oscillating under consciousness. 

A white, round grinning face hovered above him, haloed by the dark.

“A briefs guy, huh? Makes sense with the skinnies,” the mouth didn’t move and Quentin blearily remembered the mask. Bloodloss was making him disconnected, the hit on his head, only half-awake.

But he gathered enough nerves to raise his foot and kick it between Legion’s thighs. As Legion swore, Quentin grinned with blood on his teeth.

Legion shot out like a viper, slamming his palm against Quentin’s nose, and Quenti. knew, then, that there was something—a stone, a stick, a broken bone—particularly sharp cushioning the back of his skull. He groaned.

If Quentin had any sense left in him, any energy to spare, he’d be mortified. Humiliated, half undone and essentially pantsed by his murderer, before his murder. His white, scarred legs that held only passing evidence of his teenage strength as a dedicated swimmer, his own body put himself to shame. If Legion said more about it, Quentin couldn’t hear it. His mind was dribbling out of his ears with the blood, and later at the campfire, he’d find solace in the little mercies.

There was a sharp tug at his collar, popping the buttons of his shirt, and then a flick of the knife, snapping the string of his pendant. It wobbled off his chest and sunk into the blood-soaked dirt next to his shoulder, and Quentin could barely turn his head to watch. 

The knife plunged into his shoulder. Quentin wheezed, but found the last of his voice, squeezing it out from the depths of his lungs.

“No wonder you’re a shit killer—you’re _way_ too sensitive.”

It kept going—puncturing lungs, ribs, heart, vitality—and there was nothing he could think or imagine. Just wheeze, and gasp, and gurgle, and to desensitize himself to the ache of every sharp punch of the knife, and to accept his fate as the dead body in the deep woods this time. When he’d wake up at the campfire, he’d live with whatever other survivors saw this exposed demise, and Quentin didn’t regret a single thing he’d said.

**Author's Note:**

> i kinda gave up near the end whoops
> 
> i rly dunno how i feel about this fic but, shrugs.
> 
> if youre interested at all in more of me writing quentin, then you can check out my rp blog sacrisomnia (even tho its p much headcanon central with very elusive writing rn). or check out my main blog dollydeparted if you wanna, idk, bully me on anon
> 
> anyway thanks for reading!!


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